Terminal Island

by Walter Greatshell

  Of the other guests, he mainly remembers doors ajar and glimpses of beer bottles and stockinged feet propped on coffee tables beside clattering electric fans, and radio music wafting out to where young Henry lurked, peeping from the shadows.

  One day he discovered he had cousins, Peter and Paul, one older and one younger than himself, whose parents brought them to live at the decaying keep so they could get to know their dying grandmother, and whose favorite game was sitting in adjoining stalls in the hotel’s echoing communal restroom and discussing all the whimsical things their turds resembled, as if describing constellations or cloud formations:

  Ooh! Mine looks like an old man with whiskers!

  Mine looks like a pointy wooden shoe!

  I made a rattlesnake!

  An only child, Henry was jealous of the clannishness of his cousins, as well as the sense of their being privy to a branch of the family from which he was strangely excluded. Also there was their rough-and-tumble boyishness, so different from his hesitance and general awkwardness.

  This became only more pronounced as time went by, though to some degree he bonded with Peter—the two of them being the older ones. But any time Henry started to feel truly accepted or complacent about his position, there would be some little reminder of the barrier between them; evidence that he could never be one of them.

  In the presence of their wizened elf of a grandmother, who spoke no English but only a peculiar mixture of Italian and Attic Greek, his cousins continued to natter fluently long after he had become estranged from that dialect, so that Henry could only tag along and nod, clumsily hanging on whatever sparse vocabulary he still possessed: “Buon giorno, Nonna. Come stai?” “Panta rhei, panta rhei.” But he was outside the loop, imagining that they were pityingly discussing him.

  Over time the strange sticking point—the difference between them—became excruciatingly clear: Henry’s cousins had a father, while he did not. The sternly generous man who appeared from time to time to take them all on beach outings in his camper truck belonged to them, not him.

  In some ways this was good. It meant that when they got into trouble, Henry didn’t have to share the whippings—as Peter and Paul were dragged off to face the leather belt, he could just retire to quarters with his mother. But his exemption from the bad was echoed in the good: it increasingly felt like charity.

  Henry doesn’t remember exactly how or when the situation was explained, but at some point it came out that his own father died before he was born. This was not by itself a traumatic discovery—he did not feel the lack of a father, except insofar as it set him and his mother apart from the others. He did not want a father, per se. What he wanted was to be the same as everyone else.

  But alike or not, his cousins were stuck with him, just as he was with them. Whether resentful or pitying, they had no other playmates, there being an extreme scarcity of children in the industrial gulag of the harbor district.

  As the boys got older, approaching school age, their wanderings increased to encompass the street and the train yard beyond, so that they became spectators of the mechanized drama of the harbor, and connoisseurs of the varied modes of freight-hauling, their favorite being a spindly, spider-like truck that rolled along on tall struts which enabled it to drive over large cargo boxes, tuck them up underneath itself, and scoot off down the highway. To Henry and his cousins, the operator of this vehicle, seated up on his thrillingly high, exposed perch, was the monarch of the road, even more to be envied than the train engineers who waved back at them as they walked beside the tracks.

  But there was still something that outshone the cargo trucks and all the other harbor commerce. That literally soared above the mundane activity of the terminal:

  The gleaming white seaplanes of the Catalina ferry line.

  These planes—classic specimens of the tubby, boat-like Grumman Goose, now to be found only in the aviation museum of the Smithsonian—would land and take off from the harbor many times a day, yet Henry never got over the thrill of seeing them, nor of hearing the roar of their fat, wing-mounted engines as they revved for take-off, wreathed in spray. There was magic about these things; the spectacle of their uncanny, amphibious flight so much like something out of the movies, and movies—especially given the proximity of Hollywood—were a big and increasing part of Henry’s early life.

  Then, not long after Henry’s fifth birthday, the shit hit the fan.

  He didn’t know what it was about, but his mother Vicki had a final falling-out with the family, a furious disagreement, and before Henry knew what was happening she had all their things packed up in a fat Yellow Cab, scooting in beside him and tearfully waving goodbye as they pulled away for all time from everyone he knew and the familiar, comforting gloom of the Del Monte Hotel.

  We’ll be back, she called to her distraught, dying mother. Don’t worry, we’ll be back.

  The next few years were a blur of pure chaos. Henry and Vicki lived from motel to motel (most apartment owners of the time disdaining children, much less single mothers), chasing jobs and cheap housing all over Greater Los Angeles, gaining and losing footholds until at last ending up where they began: overlooking the harbor.

  Yes, they returned to San Pedro. Henry’s mother kept her promise; they had come back home.

  But the Del Monte Hotel was gone.

  “Didn’t I tell you it was coming?” his mother said.

  Henry was eight years old now, almost nine, and thought he had seen it all. But everything past was prologue—all the disappointments and retreats, the winnowing of their possessions down to what could be carried on the bus—all of it shrank to insignificance before the wonderful vision that descended from the sky, banked overhead to kiss them with its hurtling shadow, and touched down not like a goose but like a white swan upon the water. It was their vision, coming for them. They had the tickets to prove it.

  The magnificent sight of that seaplane as it waddled out of the harbor onto dry land, white keel dripping, fat black rubber wheels sloshing aground as it climbed the thickly-barnacled concrete ramp, was almost more than Henry’s pre-adolescent self could handle without bursting. Wow!—he was already closer than he ever imagined being to one of these aircraft, yet the threshold of reality would be pushed back still further, he knew; was about to be pushed beyond the limits of his imagining.

  He watched awestruck as the plane executed a lazy taxi, propellers blasting spray off the tarmac as it presented its door to their cordoned-off boarding area under the flapping orange wind sock. With a final roar, the engines subsided.

  The curved door behind the wing was opened, a step was lowered, and a smart-uniformed crewman emerged. At the same time, ground personnel opened the gate and briskly escorted the dozen or so passengers to the plane, checking seat assignments and directing Henry and his mother into the small cabin, up the narrow aisle.

  Inside the fuselage it was cozy; the sound was muffled, and the curtained dimness—the bus smell and rows of fabric-padded seats—lent a feeling of homey familiarity.

  Henry took his seat, really no different than a seat on the Greyhound Bus, and looked out the window at the sunlit terminal building and the big orange ball of the Union 76 station just beyond. The Del Monte Hotel was now only an empty lot, a bare patch on the hill, but he knew his mother was weepily staring in the direction it had been.

  He wished she would forget about it. There was nothing there, and had never been. Not for them. But this, finally, was theirs; their moment, their future. No more crummy motels, no more crazy family, no more cockroach-ridden slums—this time they were moving to paradise. To Catalina Island!

  It was the greatest moment of Henry’s life. He could never have imagined it would also be the precursor to the strangest and worst...or the last.

  Chapter Three

  AVALON, PRESENT DAY

  “Ooh, Moxie! Look at the fishy! See the fishy?”

  Ruby is recording as Henry pushes Moxie’s stroller up the ramp connecting the ferry do
ck to the wharf. Below them the water is gorgeous aquamarine, churned silvery by the idling ship, with vines of swaying kelp looming dark green and brown out of the depths. Here and there amid fizzy shafts of sunlight are living spots of bright orange.

  “Those are Garibaldi perch,” Henry says, going back for the luggage. “Named after the Italian explorer. They’re protected. It’s like a five-hundred dollar fine to kill one.”

  “That is so cool,” says Ruby. “They’re like big goldfish. See the pretty fishy, honey?”

  “No,” Moxie says, craning out of her stroller. “Where?”

  “Right there. Follow my finger.”

  “Pishy, mommy! Stop! Wanna see Pishy!”

  “Right down there. There’s one! See?”

  “No!”

  “Right there, silly.”

  “Oh.” Moxie squints blankly at the fish and settles back, unimpressed.

  “This is so beautiful,” says Ruby, taking a panoramic shot of the steep, rocky hillsides surrounding the town of Avalon like a great amphitheater; the expensive houses perched up there like sentinels, their picture windows overlooking the village and the perfect crescent beach below. “What a place to live. It looks like Greece or something.”

  “Yeah, it’s a nice place to visit…”

  The island is nearly as beautiful as Henry remembers. Even after thirty-plus years it is much the same, the harbor entrance still dominated by the Coliseum-like Casino and its stone jetty, the picturesque moored boats and the same old rickety green fishing pier. At least from here the town looks the same, too: the tourist shops and restaurants along the brick promenade, the bars and hotels—perhaps it is all just a bit more deliberately quaint than he remembers, a little more Disneyfied and upscale, but basically the same. After all, it was a tourist trap back then, too. He just saw it with different eyes.

  The most visible difference now—and Henry noticed this while the ferry was still far away from the island—is the amount of development that has taken place on the mountainous flanks of Avalon: enormous white banks of luxury terraces climbing arid sea-cliffs that had previously been the province of wild goats and pigs. Construction has obviously been booming.

  “Should we try to track down your mother first, or should we get a bite to eat?” Ruby asks. Henry knows she is just being supportive; none of them has eaten yet, and Moxie is getting cranky, but if he needs to do his thing, she’s there for him.

  “Pancakes! Pancakes, mommy!” Moxie moans theatrically. “Pa-a-a-ancakes!”

  “Thanks, honey,” he says gratefully to his wife. “No, let’s eat. There’s no rush.”

  “Coffee for you folks?”

  “Yes, please. Decaf.”

  “Same for me.”

  “All we have is Sanka.”

  “That’s okay. As long as it doesn’t have caffeine—caffeine makes me insane.”

  “Two Sankas…” The waitress scribbles briskly on her pad, then looks up. Her nametag reads, Glennis. “Do you need a couple more minutes, or do you know what you’re having?”

  “I think we know. I guess we’ll both have the Two-Egg Special, eggs over easy, with rye toast. And could I get a side order of avocado with that?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Thanks so much. Oh, and a glass of orange juice, and—”

  “Pancakes, daddy, pancakes!”

  “—and the Short Stack of pancakes and a glass of milk.”

  “…O-kee-doke. Will that do it for you folks?”

  “Yep, that oughtta do it for now. Thanks, Glennis.”

  “Thank you. Your order should be right out.”

  After the waitress leaves, Ruby grins and says, “You always get so folksy in places like this.”

  “It’s just neighborly.”

  “Shoot, I should have asked for water.” Ruby is just noticing signs apologizing for the island policy of not serving water unless it is requested. “After being out on that deck in the wind I could drink about a gallon.”

  “Tell her when she comes back.”

  As they sit and wait, enjoying the late breakfast ambiance and the view of the beach promenade, they become aware of a babble of conversation issuing from the next booth:

  “—and I think you’ll agree that restaurant prices here are comparable to dining out on the mainland.”

  “Yes, but what about the water shortage? Is that a problem?”

  “Not at all. As you can see there are longstanding conservation measures in place. There’s plenty of water to go around, don’t worry.”

  “I just wonder how they can keep building condos right and left if the water supply is limited.”

  “Every new construction has to submit an environmental impact statement to prove it’s sustainable. It’s all very environmentally friendly.”

  “But is it those low-flow toilets and fixtures? I hate those.”

  “Not at all—our units have nothing but the most luxurious bathroom appointments. A little later we’ll take a drive up there and you can see for yourself.”

  “Gee, I just don’t understand how it can be so inexpensive…”

  “Not everyone wants to live on an island year-round. These are residential retirement units, not vacation property—we’ve designed them specifically to appeal to independent-minded folks like yourselves, people who are alone in their golden years and may be seeking more of a sense of belonging, of community.”

  “But I heard condos here start at half a million dollars.”

  “We use a sliding scale; some of our residents do pay that.”

  “So they subsidize people like me. How do they feel about that?”

  “You can ask them yourselves—I think you’ll find they’re all very warm and welcoming. It’s just like our brochure says: ‘Come for a look, stay for a lifetime.’”

  Henry steals a backward glance and sees a party of elderly ladies and a tall, lustrous blond woman. The blond is the one making the sales pitch, and is wearing a name tag that says Hi! My name is Lisa.

  Henry leans over the seat and says, “I’m sorry to bother you folks, but I couldn’t help overhearing that you were talking about condos. Could I just ask you a quick question?”

  “I guess so,” the blond says, smiling thinly.

  “Well, I spent a little time here as a kid, and I always wondered what it would be like to live here. Do you know anything about a place called Shady Isle?”

  “Of course. Did you want to make an appointment with one of our agents? Let me just give you some of our literature—”

  “Well, the reason I ask is that my mother just moved up there, and I was curious about the place.”

  “Your mother lives up there?” The woman sounds oddly perplexed.

  “Yes. Something wrong with that?”

  “No, but…shouldn’t you ask her, then?”

  “Oh sure, but I was wondering what the locals thought about it.”

  “Thought about what?”

  “All those new residents moving in. If there’s any friction…?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Because I remember the islanders weren’t too crazy about outsiders when I was here.”

  “I’m not sure what would’ve given you that idea, but I can assure you it’s not the case.”

  “Don’t they put a strain on the resources, though?”

  “Resources?”

  Henry taps the conservation notice. “Water shortage.”

  Her smile frozen, the woman says, “It’s not an issue.”

  “Oh, good. That’s good to know. Must be some pretty crazy competition for building permits in a place like this, though. A lot of back-door maneuvering, if you know what I mean. I’d love to know who’s getting a piece of that action.”

  “Sir, I really wouldn’t know. Now, if you don’t mind…”

  “No, that’s okay. Thanks, Lisa.” Henry turns back to his own table, whispering to Ruby, “Was it something I said?”

  “She’s just busy, honey.”

 
Suddenly Henry realizes he’s being watched with raptor-like intensity by someone in the booth opposite—a thickly-scarred bald guy with forearms like furry hams. The man’s brutish head and neck form one contiguous unit that rises like a stump from the collar of his knit shirt. But something doesn’t fit the picture: A tiny pair of bifocals is perched on the man’s ruined nose—an old-time boxer’s nose—and documents from an open briefcase are spread across his table, giving him the look of a scholarly gorilla.

  Ruby snaps Henry’s attention back: “Oh, shoot,” she says.

  “What?”

  “I forgot to ask for water again.”

  “Yeah, I need hot sauce, too.” Henry turns to call the waitress, when suddenly something about that blond woman registers in his mind:

  Lisa. Holy shit.

  The height, the blond hair, that perfect chin. The attitude. It’s her; it’s definitely her. Henry puts his hand over his mouth and glances back around, unsure of whether to laugh or scream. “Oh my God,” he murmurs, shaking his head.

  “What?” Ruby says, alarmed by his sudden change of complexion. “What’s the matter?”

  Under his breath, he says, “I remember that woman.”

  “Who? The condo woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about her?”

  “Just someone I went to school here with,” he says. “Nothing. I’ll tell you later.” He looks down at his plate as if noticing it for the first time. “Phew, looks good! I’m starving.”

  “I still haven’t gotten my water.”

  “Can we skip the damn water?”

  This comes out more harshly than he intended. Henry realizes he’s sweating. Moxie pipes up, “Mommy! Daddy made boo-boo—give him time out!”